How to Play the Card Game Casualty War

Casualty War is a variation of the classic card game War. Unlike regular War, Casualty War is played with two decks of cards, and there can be multiple wars in a single hand. There is also a chance that the player who wins a war might not get all the cards from the table, and a possibility that some of the cards will be removed from play. But just as in standard War, Casualty War can take a significant amount of time for two players to complete.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Playing cards (two decks)

1. Find an opponent to play against. Casualty War is designed for exactly two players. A game can take over an hour to complete, so set aside plenty of time.

2. Remove the jokers from two decks of playing cards and shuffle them. Deal 52 cards to each player. Players should not look at their own cards.

3. Start a round by having each player flip over three cards from the top of his pile. If none of the cards matches a card from the opponent's three-card pile, each player adds the values of his cards, and the player with the higher total wins all six cards. The cards from 2 to 10 are worth face value; the jack is worth 11, the queen 12, the king 13 and the ace 14. The winner of the cards places them at the bottom of her deck.

4. Conduct a war if any of the cards revealed in Step 3 matches a card played by the other player. There can be multiple wars in one round of Casualty War. To conduct a war, place play three face-down cards from each player's deck of cards and three face-up. The player with the higher point total wins the war.If there are multiple matches out of the original three cards played, play three face down cards and three face up cards for each of these wars individually. Whichever player wins the most wars in that round wins all the cards played on the table. If there are two wars, and one player wins each, each player collects the cards from the war he or she won, and keeps their third card he or she originally played to start the hand.

5. Determine the casualties in a war before collecting the cards. If a war is conducted, all the played cards, including the face-down cards, must be revealed. If there are any sets of three matching cards on the table, those cards are removed from the game before the winner collects his cards. The winning player--or both players, if each player won one war during the round--collects the cards from the wars he won and the remaining cards on the table, placing them at the bottom of his pile of cards.

6. Continue playing rounds of Casualty War until one player is out of cards.

Tips & Warnings

• If a player does not have enough cards to complete a round, she loses the game.
• Like standard War, this game can last a long time; players may want to end it before one of them has all of the cards. One way to address this is to play a set number of rounds. The recommended minimum is 40.